1921 could be pan-India helpline for power woes

The power ministry is set to announce a countrywide 24-hour uniform four-digit helpline number that consumers can dial to lodge a complaint about faulty power lines or outages in their area.TNN | May 12, 2016, 07:32 IST

NEW DELHI: The power ministry is set to announce a countrywide 24-hour uniform four-digit helpline number that consumers can dial to lodge a complaint about faulty power lines or outages in their area.

“We have applied to DoT (department of telecommunications) for allotment of a number. It would be a three or four digit number,” power, coal and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal told TOI on Wednesday but declined to confirm the number. Ministry sources said in all probability, the number would be ‘1921’.

The helpline would connect to state or discom control rooms, which would dispatch repair teams nearest to the caller’s area. All data related to the complaint would be made available on a website and an app.

“A complaint number would be generated once a call is made. Everything will go on record… What the consumer said, what reply he received, when the complaint was attended to, the nature of the problem,” Goyal said.

Subscribe to our Newsletters

The ongoing field development and EOR/IOR projects are expected to produce a cumulative of 54.6 million tonne (mt) of crude oil and 114 billion cubic meter (bcm) of natural gas in the next three to four years, the report said.